Mary Katharine points out that Joe Biden's chief of staff, Ted Kaufman, has been named to fill his boss's seat. Kaufman says he will step down in 2010. By all indications Kaufman is simply keeping the seat warm until Beau Biden, Joe's son and Delaware's attorney general, will return from serving in Iraq as a JAG and run for his dad's seat. In what NBC reporters describe as a "lengthy" statement from Biden (is there any other kind?), the vice president-elect pretty much says he would have wanted his son to have his seat if he weren't in Iraq:
"It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General Beau Biden would make a great United States Senator-just as I believe he has been a great Attorney General," Biden said. "But Beau has made it clear from the moment he entered public life, that any office he sought, he would earn on his own. He proved that two years ago when he turned down an appointment as Attorney General. Instead, he ran on his own and won election. Typical of Beau, he made it clear again his year that he would not accept an appointment to the United States Senate. As he said when he deployed overseas, he is determined to fulfill his military obligations and then return to his duties as Attorney General. If he chooses to run for the Senate in the future, he will have to run and win on his own. He wouldn't have it any other way. In making her decision, the governor has made it clear that whoever seeks the office in 2010 will do so from a level playing field. The voters will make that decision. For now, my concern is with Beau's safety, not his political future."
Delaware Democrats seem a bit miffed that no one informed them of Kaufman's appointment prior to the governor's announcement. Could Biden's positioning to get his son in the Senate lead to a backlash and create an opening for a Republican to have a serious shot at the seat? Perhaps. But the fact that Beau Biden wasn't directly appointed to fill his father's seat lessens the appearance of blatant nepotism--the kind of nepotism that nearly led to the defeat of Alaska's senator Lisa Murkowski in 2004, who was appointed by her father Frank. The Alaska legislature later passed a law against appointing a family member to office, and you may recall Frank Murkowski was walloped in a gubernatorial Republican primary by a certain moose-hunting former mayor of Wasilla.